Introduction to IRAF

About This Document:

This is a quick introduction to IRAF (the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility). IRAF is "a general purpose software system for the reduction and analysis of astronomical data" written by IRAF group at the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO). I'm attempting to write this tutorial in a general sense to be a good intro for students in an undergraduate course in observational astronomy, or for students getting started in research who need to learn IRAF. This tutorial covers just the very basics of using IRAF, my own experience with IRAF is limited to a few particular types of reductions, so this is far from comprehensive. However given the tools learned here, you should be able to learn most of the more sophisticated packages and tools.